408 THE KEEPER'S BOOK 



direct influence on his sport. When Dr. John Brown 

 wrote of Struan Robertson, " Like all true sportsmen, 

 he was a naturalist," he enunciated something better 

 than a half-truth. There is, no doubt, something 

 enviable in mechanical perfection, whether in throwing 

 a fly or pointing a gun, but it is less enviable in the 

 man with no eye or ear for the wonders of nature, and, 

 be he never so successful as a fisherman, he is no com- 

 plete angler in the best sense of the word. The finest 

 passages of Walton's classic, the passages which have 

 lived, are not those which tell how to put a worm on 

 a hook. There was something, surely, about the music 

 of the nightingale that is treasured by many who never 

 wetted a line. 



For the sea-fisherman, who is visited by neither 

 the gorgeous kingfisher nor the sombre heron, the 

 most friendly birds are the gulls, familiar in every 

 marine scene, whether circling in the eye of the storm 

 or paddling in the tidal harbour. No one should shoot 

 gulls. In the first place, they offer such easy shots that 

 none but a duffer could miss them. Secondly, save in 

 very exceptional circumstances (when too attentive, 

 for instance, to the nurseries of young trout), they do 

 no harm. Indeed, they are useful birds in their way, 

 keeping many a harbour clean that would, but for their 

 services, be a hotbed of typhoid, and, in foggy weather, 

 warning the fishermen off the rocks, just as, in fine, 

 they often show them where the fish are. Thirdly, 

 these birds, so beautiful in life, are useless when shot. 



